


Harry Potter and the Showstopper of Doom

by DoubleApple



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Great British Bake Off Fusion, Baking, Childhood Trauma, Competition, Domestic Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Established Relationship, Forgiveness, H/D Food Fair 2018, Harry Potter Cooks, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Past Child Abuse, Post-Hogwarts, Protective Draco Malfoy, Shop Owner Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-07-13 09:41:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16015301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleApple/pseuds/DoubleApple
Summary: In which Harry’s an amateur baker, Draco wants him to go on the Great British Bake-Off, Petunia never misses an episode, Sue is a witch, Paul Hollywood is Paul Hollywood, and everyone eats a lot — like a whole lot — of baked goods.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt #[42](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E_uQJlIb5C6nLnMg8VrUUnrKtyx16is1FLbyvoxLEik/edit).
> 
> Thanks, Momatu, for this irresistible crossover idea! This may be a lot more Petunia than you bargained for (me too) but she showed up and just wouldn’t go away. 
> 
> All the thanks in the world to my alpha & beta readers — icarus, ic, & Maccadole — for the important work you put into this beast. You're all amazing.
> 
> This takes place in an AU where Mel and Sue and Mary Berry are still exactly where they belong.
> 
> Characters are property of Scholastic and J.K. Rowling; I own nothing.

“Potter, hurry up or you’ll miss the showstoppers!” Draco loves the Great British Bake-Off. Not as much as he loves Harry, of course, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to skip a minute of the program.

“You tosser, stop howling,” Harry calls, his voice muffled. “It’s streaming — just pause it!”

“You know I don’t know how to do that!” Draco calls back, rolling his eyes. It’s Harry’s job to operate the remote.

Harry finally hurries back and sets two large bowls of cold cereal on the low table in front of Draco, then sits down next to him and swings his feet up to rest in Draco’s lap while he lies back on the couch. Draco takes his bowl without even looking at it, eyes glued to the screen. 

Taking his first bite, Draco grimaces and holds out his bowl to Harry. “Ugh, how much sugar did you put in yours?”

Harry huffs out a laugh and switches their bowls. “Just enough to make it tolerable. You’re the only person on earth who can eat Weetabix with no sugar.”

“Hardly. It’s a wonder you have any teeth left.” Draco turns back to the screen. “Ooh, they’re starting the final bake.” 

They eat in silence, watching the bakers make complex structures out of gingerbread, until Draco sets his empty bowl down and absently rubs Harry’s stocking feet. Draco always pretends he can barely tolerate Harry’s feet in his lap, but really, he loves the easy intimacy, even when Harry shoves his freezing toes into the crook of Draco’s elbow. And, wait a minute — sure enough, both big toes are poking through the threadbare socks. Honestly. These are Harry’s favourites, knitted by Molly Weasley in a hideous shade of Gryffindor gold, and Harry _still_ doesn’t take care of them properly. Draco casts a warming charm and a quick _Reparo_ on the patchy spots.

“Mmm, thanks.” Harry wiggles his toes, smiles absently, and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “Christ, that bloke with the lisp has only got, what, 20 minutes? And it’s far too soft, fuck, how can he possibly redo the whole thing?”

“I don’t know, but now I really need some bloody dessert. Our crap dinners are even more crap when we’re watching this show,” Draco says, suddenly wanting gingerbread rather desperately. “Do we have cake or anything?”

“Nope. You’re the one who told me to stop baking,” Harry says. 

“I didn’t _mean_ it. Don’t listen to me when I talk rubbish like that, you should know by now.” Draco smacks at Harry’s feet, and Harry pushes back at his ribs.

He starts to mimic Draco, in a high-pitched voice with an exaggerated posh accent: “‘Oh, Harry, I need to cut back on carbs! My trousers don’t fit anymore, Harry!’”

“Fuck off, Potter!” Draco’s laughing, and he grabs Harry’s feet and sits on them. “Stop _attacking_ me, you cretin, they’re about to start the judging.”

***

The next week, they’re sprawled out on the couch again, but time, Harry’s made eclairs, like they’re baking on the show tonight. He’d gone through four or five batches to get them just right — not that Draco could tell the difference. Every one he’d tried had tasted brilliant.

“Merlin’s tits, Potter, this is fucking delicious.” Draco licks a bit of cream from his lip and sighs with pleasure. “Did you spike the batter with felix felicis or something? Honestly.”

“I just like watching you eat them,” Harry says, shooting Draco a lewd smile. “It’s simple, though, once you get the choux down properly.”

“Whatever that means.” Draco scrapes his fork against the plate to get at every last bit of chocolate. “If you’d put this much effort into your potions, maybe you’d have been able to brew one properly once in a while.” 

Harry snorts and hands Draco the rest of his second eclair. “Well, I didn’t have to brew potions constantly as a kid, but I had to cook every bloody day.” 

Harry’s relaxed, but Draco knows that memories of his childhood don’t come easily. He squeezes his hand, and Harry absently brings Draco’s fingers to his mouth and kisses them as, on the screen, a man from Suffolk is completely botching his creme pat. Draco winces at the man’s lumpy scrambled eggs, and Harry mutters “poor bloke” at the screen. 

“I know someone whose creme pat is better than that…” Draco lets his voice trail off. 

“Give it a rest,” Harry says, but he’s smiling. 

“Hmmm.” Draco pretends to consider it. “No, I don’t think I will give it a rest, because you know full well that you’d be amazing on this show. And you spent how many hours perfecting your cream sauce this week?”

“It’s not ‘cream sauce’—”

Draco interrupts: “How many hours?”

“Mal—”

“How many hours?”

Harry sighs. “Come off it, we’ve been over this a million times...”

Draco can’t tell if Harry’s really annoyed or just playing, so he presses on. 

“It was half a day, at least, and you loved doing it. And it’s not like you’re, you know, working terribly hard.” 

“Hey,” Harry says. “I help out at the shop!” Draco’s sweet shop in Diagon Alley is a full-time job — for him, not for Harry, and even he can still slip home for lunch and a quick shag once in a while.

“Fine, but you don’t have a proper job, and you know it. Just last week, you said you were bored to tears and needed some kind of life purpose, or some Gryffindor nonsense like that.”

”I’m not sure that going on a reality baking competition qualifies as having a purpose in life,” Harry says drily. 

“Of course it does. This show brings happiness to half the English-speaking world!” Draco gestures with his hand vaguely and Harry rolls his eyes, so Draco picks up another eclair and waves it in front of Harry’s face. “I mean, _look_ at this! It’s a thing of beauty. Why are you trying to deny the world your eclairs? What do you have to lose?”

“Draco! Stop. I’m not going on the show.”

Draco changes track. Feigning surrender, he sighs and slumps back on the couch. “All right, fine. This is literally the last thing I can ever imagine you doing, anyway.”

Harry fixes his gaze on Draco, and now there’s a little spark, a kindling of interest, a flare of challenge that he can’t help but show. 

“Oh, come on, love, how thick do you think I am?” Harry grumbles. “I see what you’re doing. You can’t goad me into it like we’re fourth-years.” 

But ohhh, Draco thinks, of course, _of course_ he can do exactly that. Draco berates himself, _of course!_ — how could he not have done this ages ago? 

“Whatever, it’s a ridiculous idea,” he says nonchalantly. He turns his attention away from Harry and licks a bit of cream off his fingers. “After all these years of ‘lying low’” — he lets himself add some gentle sarcasm quotes — “you’d never go on television, would you.”

“That’s cute, Draco, but you can’t _‘scared, Potter?’_ me into signing on.”

“Oh, I’d never. Probably you wouldn’t make it through the auditions anyway. I hear they’re impossible.” Draco takes another bite of the eclair, which really is beyond delicious. 

“You are so completely transparent,” Harry says with a laugh, but Draco can practically see the cogs turning in Harry’s head. He forces himself not to look over, to stay casual and cool. They watch for another few minutes while the poor bloke, now very red in the face, struggles with a mirror glaze and some unlucky Scottish woman drops her technical challenge on the floor of the tent.

“I mean, it _is_ a Muggle show.” Draco can’t quite read Harry’s tone, but he’s chewing on his bottom lip — a clear sign he’s thinking hard. “Probably no one in the wizarding world even watches it, yeah?”

“Mm-hm, probably,” Draco says noncommittally. Almost every witch and wizard he knows watches it.

Another few minutes go by. The Scottish woman recovers; the man with the unfortunate creme pat goes home.

“Maybe I’ll just try out, then,” Harry says, glancing over at Draco. “It’ll be a lark. I’m sure I won’t even make it on the show.”

“Mm-hm,” Draco says again, around another mouthful of eclair. He shoves the rest of it in his mouth, trying to muffle the note of triumph and the giant grin that wants to spread across his face.

*** 

Of course Harry makes it on the show. 

He’s convinced he won’t, throughout the long and complex audition process, and he drives Draco absolutely barmy with his anxiety. He calls himself “Barry McScuffins,” for reasons Draco cannot begin to fathom. He transfigures a piece of parchment into a Muggle birth certificate, and then uses it to apply for the loads of paperwork he needs for the show. A driving card, a passport, proof of residence, Merlin only knows what else — Draco stopped paying attention long ago. 

Harry vows he’ll never use magic in the kitchen, even if a few charms would make everything vastly easier. He won’t even use magic for the tricky computer bits of the preliminary auditions or to help himself get a mobile.

The morning before the first in-person audition, Harry asks Draco to charm away his scar. Draco’s particularly good at little charms like this, far better than Harry, so he casts a light glamour and smooths out Harry’s skin for a few days at a time. (Later, Harry admits that he loves the glamour, that it feels liberating to walk through the world without his scar. He says it’s like hiding in plain sight, and it’s a relief to be without it. It gives Draco a sad little twinge every time he casts it before Harry leaves for a Bake-Off weekend.)

When Harry’s through the first audition — and of course he gets through it, Draco thinks, he’s gorgeous and self-effacing and charming, he’ll be absolute candy on the screen — he has to bring two bakes for judging. He chooses eclairs, because Draco insists, and a rustic apple-currant tart that’s meant to showcase his grasp of classic skills. He finally meets Mel and Sue at this stage; Harry told Draco that Sue had gone a bit pale while shaking his hand. He knew he’d been recognised, so he whispered, “no magic, promise,” as she leaned in with a fork to nick a bite of his tart. She’d whispered back, “all right, steady on, Mr Potter.” 

There’s a screen test, which he nails again, and a technical challenge. He tells Draco he’s done for after that bit — filo dough was involved, and apparently that’s difficult — but the next day during dinner, Harry’s mobile buzzes across the kitchen table again, and he’s summoned back once more. 

The psychological exam is the trickiest bit. Harry tells Draco afterward that pretending magic isn’t real was surprisingly easy — he talked a lot about growing up and just how young he was when he first learned to bake, how he taught himself through cookbooks and trial and error. Casually, he tells Draco that he just glossed over exactly _why_ he spent so much time in the kitchen, and the fact that he was punished for wasting time and ingredients if he made something subpar. 

Harry even refuses to use magic to get to and from all the audition meetings. Instead, he takes the train from London to Ilford, going down to the station and buying some sort of card and boarding like everyone else. The whole process seems to ignite his competitive spirit, which typically only surfaces during Quidditch matches and drunk arm-wrestling with Ron. When the mobile buzzes to say he’s been selected, Draco can tell he’s quietly thrilled. Draco doesn’t even say I told you so.

Harry’s excited about something, and it’s beautiful.


	2. Harry

Harry hadn’t expected to be truly nervous when he began the competition. Merlin knew, he’d been through far worse than this.

But during the brief bus ride from the hotel to the tent — it had been years since he’s been on a Muggle bus; he’d forgotten how bumpy and odd it was — the other bakers’ nerves began to affect him too. Nervous chatter turned to jittery silence, and everyone looked a bit ill by the time they arrived at the tent. A producer pointed Harry toward his station, which positively shone. Every surface gleamed and the air smelled brilliantly new and fresh. People bustled around, lighting and measuring and testing things, and Harry realised for the first time that the serenity this program projected into the small screen was very carefully constructed. 

A dark-haired camera operator bustled by with, oddly, a fork sticking out of her back pocket. When she caught sight of Harry, she did a visible double-take, stumbled to a stop, and nearly dropped a large coil of electrical cord. He quickly stuck out his hand for the woman to shake, trying to interrupt the shock of recognition. 

“Hi, I’m Barry. Barry McScuffins. One of the new contestants.”

“Barry McScuffins. Oh. I see,” she said, somewhat faintly. She took his hand. 

Harry made eye contact and began to nod, slowly, silently willing her to go along with it. He should have anticipated more of this, after Sue’s reaction. “Yep. Good to meet you.”

“Barry,” she repeated. 

“Barry.” Their hands were still clasped in the handshake, and Harry started to feel too visible. People were introducing themselves all over the room, but none of the other contestants were shaking hands for an extended period of time, rather too meaningfully, with anyone else. “I’m going to be baking this season. What’s your name?”

“Priya. Is my name. _Barry_ is _your_ name.” She began to nod slowly back at Harry, and then suddenly glanced down at their hands and let go, as if she hadn’t realised they were still connected. 

“Hi, Priya. Good to meet you.” Harry chanced a quick smile, which she returned.

“Er, you too. Thank you for everything you’ve… before… er, thank you for coming on the show.”

“Yeah, I got lucky. What’s the fork for?” Harry asked, motioning to her pocket. 

“Oh — it’s for eating your bakes. Where did you think all this delicious food goes when you’re through?” Priya, recovering quickly now, looped the coil over her shoulder. Behind her, something crashed to the ground, and she winced. “I need to get back. Good luck to you, Barry McScuffins.” 

She smiled at him again, her eyes genuine and kind, and walked toward the production area. Harry took a deep breath and turned his attention back to his station. 

Three hours later, Harry was elbow-deep in ingredients for the first signature bake. It was bloody harder than he’d expected. They’d started off with something relatively simple — Biscuit Week — but Harry’s dough kept turning out powdery and strange. He’d had to redo it twice, and he was running out of time. It was far cooler in the tent than in his kitchen at home, and he wished hard for just one simple warming charm. The butter was clumpy, the dough was stiff, and the essence of chamomile tea in his mix seemed far too strong. 

But the biscuits came out all right in the end, if a touch dry, and Harry emerged in the middle of the pack. His technical challenge — some violently old-fashioned tuile monstrosities that Paul had thought up — was a mess, but there were others who did even worse. 

The next day, Harry hit it out of the park on the showstopper. Three tiers of delicate sandwiches with different stone-fruit jams. Carefully, Harry cut out the shapes of the corresponding fruit on top of each shortbread and dusted them with his special ginger-infused icing sugar. Mary pronounced them “scrummy,” Sue ate three spoonfuls of his black cherry preserves straight from the pot, and Harry earned himself a place in the next round. 

_Game on_ , Harry thought, as he fist-bumped a fellow baker and the producers huddled to wrap things up. From across the room, he spotted Priya slipping two of the apricot-plum jam sandwiches into her bag. Draco would be chuffed, Harry thought, and grinned to himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Petunia Dursley never misses an episode of the Great British Bake-Off. 

She began watching because all the neighbours did, of course, but now she views it as quite her own pleasure. She’s been looking forward to the new series for months. 

Inside the sitting room of Number Four Privet Drive, Petunia places her teacup and biscuits on a side table and sits down on her favourite flowered recliner. Its plastic cover squeaks and crunches as she settles in. 

Her biscuits are the generic Tesco kind. She always buys the plain everyday digestives, never the fancy bourbon creams or the fruit shortcakes, although she can’t help herself from occasionally gazing at them on the shelves when she does her shopping. 

Petunia allows herself to have biscuits exactly twice a week while watching her evening programs. She always puts them on the same china plate, one of the good ones with the delicate deer pattern that she’d inherited from her mum’s side of the family. 

After a few minutes of ads and promotions, the theme music starts up. There’s the familiar overhead shot of the perfect green fields, and the white expense of the tent, and there are Mel and Sue making their opening jokes that even Petunia cannot help but smile at. With the anticipation of the new season spread out before her, she is as close to happy as she’ll ever be. 

As they begin to introduce the new bakers, she sizes them up quickly, making mental notes and predictions she’ll be able to discuss with her bridge partner Beulah the next day. 

There’s a Sikh man with a turban. He and another fellow, a schoolteacher type, both have very large beards — which makes Petunia shudder a bit; wouldn’t those coarse little hairs fall in their bakes? There are two older women (Petunia always roots for the older women, naturally, unless they’re _too_ much older) and a very plump mother of four who looks far too pleased with herself. 

Next are a posh young girl with a ruffled purple apron and an even younger-seeming ginger boy. They both seem completely intolerable, and she disapproves heartily. Young people should be at home or at university, full stop, not in serious baking competitions. 

Petunia purses her lips, already relishing the argument she’s formulating for Beulah, and picks up her cup and saucer. She dunks one biscuit into her tea — not for too long, she doesn’t want soggy crumbs in the bottom of the cup. 

The next introduction begins: “Barry is a homemaker who loves baking for his friends and family. He says he believes in the ‘healing powers’ of spending time in his cosy London kitchen. Barry’s husband owns a candy shop, and Barry likes to use his creative sweets in his bakes. His sleepytime-inspired biscuits incorporate calming elements of honey and chamomile tea.” 

Petunia drops her biscuit onto her plate, and then she drops the plate. It bounces soundlessly on the worn carpet, forgotten biscuits lying next to it forlornly as she stares open-mouthed at the telly. She doesn’t even notice the tea that spills on the carpet.

***

During the first weeks of filming, Draco is more on edge than Harry. Contestants are sworn to secrecy, of course, with official legal documentation and binding contracts, and Draco suspects darkly that Harry tells him even less than he could just because he likes seeing Draco squirm. 

But the competition seems to be going well — if only because Harry is continuing to cover their kitchen in flour every day, practising. He leaves every weekend and returns home with the same goofy grin each time, then proceeds to request mounds of ingredients and do nothing but bake all week. The flow of baked goods coming from their kitchen is constant and fantastic.

Most nights he fetches supplies for Harry after closing up the shop. He buys fifteen pounds of sugar and flour at a time, dozens of blocks of butter and cream cheese, and cartons upon cartons of eggs. 

And then there are the odd bits — poppy seeds and candied ginger, marzipan, thick French yogurt, fresh figs and passionfruit and nets of miniature kumquats, a jar of hazelnut flour, almond paste, tiny bottles of unusual extracts and liqueurs. Draco buys ingredients like it’s his job. He also buys himself bigger trousers. 

One week, Harry asks for caraway seeds nearly every night, as he bakes loaf after loaf of dense rye bread. It takes him a while to get the yeast ratio right; Draco takes slices of it for lunch every day, spread thickly with cream cheese and stacked with sliced tomato. A few of them could be used as bludger bats, although Hermione — pregnant, after many years of trying to conceive — claims to love them all and sends the Granger-Weasley family owl over for the extras three nights in a row. 

That’s not enough for Ron, though, and on a rainy Wednesday night, the two of them pop through the Floo and head straight for the kitchen. 

“By ‘dinner,’ I hope you realise we mean ‘nothing but bread,’” Draco says. The four of them survey the cornucopia of bread laid out on Harry’s and Draco’s kitchen table. 

Ron laughs, rubbing his hands together like a kid. “You’re going hard for this, mate!”

“Of course he is, Weasley, have you ever _met_ him?” Draco asks, arching an eyebrow.

Harry grins and offers a roll to Hermione, who takes it and smiles at him in a way that sends a twinge through Draco. After the war, Harry, Hermione, and Ron grew incredibly close. They lived together for a time, and the three of them shared a bed for years. Harry claims it wasn’t a bit odd, was completely platonic and a practical way to deal with their nightmares and post-traumatic stress, but their bond still gets under Draco’s skin sometimes. 

Ron picks up a large serrated knife and says, “may as well start somewhere” as he slices into a large loaf sprinkled with some kind of herbs. Hermione bites into her roll and closes her eyes for a moment. 

“Harry, that’s utterly brilliant,” she says. 

Ron offers Draco a slice, which he accepts, as Hermione and Harry begin discussing his week’s bake and head off down the table.

Ron brushes crumbs from his work uniform, then thinks better of it and Vanishes the robes entirely. Underneath, he’s got on a tattered t-shirt that looks like it hasn’t been washed in ages. Draco looks more carefully and is surprised to find that Ron seems exhausted, weary with fatigue, pale and almost grey beneath his freckles. 

“Speaking of going hard,” Draco says gently. “How’s the Auror force these days?”

Ron doesn’t look at him, and runs a hand through his hair. “S’alright,” he says, reaching for a slab of butter.

“You’re the worst liar, honestly."

“Shut up,” Ron says quietly. Draco quirks an eyebrow at him and waits. 

“Sometimes I just think Harry’s got the right idea, is all,” Ron adds, buttering his bread. “Getting out of this whole business. It’s pants being an Auror. Absolute fucking pants. I’ve been chasing after these evil fuckers for my whole life, practically, and it never ends.”

Draco bites his lip and looks away; he can’t help it, even after all this time. 

Ron sighs and rolls his eyes. “I don’t mean your lot, Malfoy,” he says, unconvincingly, and now he’s the one to look away. Abruptly setting down his plate, Ron heads back over to Hermione, wraps his long arms around her and rests his chin on her shoulder.


	4. Harry

Harry figured that if he could make it through bread week, he’d be well pleased. It was odd to think he'd only been on the show for five weeks. It felt like so much longer, and he could barely remember what he used to do with his time before it was all taken up with baking. 

Which didn’t mean it wasn’t challenging. Harry had known from the outset that the savoury challenges would be harder for him than the sweet, so he’d practised like never before — so much, in fact, that he was doing best in the savoury category. 

For the signature bake, he’d settled on a rosemary sourdough with just a teaspoon of lemon peel in the batter. It had been Hermione’s favourite the other night, and it had served him well in the tent. The technical was a flatbread, which he’d botched as usual, but he winced when he saw how badly the others had done too. And for the bread showstopper, he’d made a gigantic, hollow pumpkin-sage bread in the shape of an empanada, stuffed with miniature empanadas — pumpkin, sharp cheddar cheese, roasted garlic and sage in a flaky beer-infused crust. In other words, a giant pumpkin pasty. 

Harry opened the oven and looked at the massive bread. He rapped it a few times — it sounded just right — and pulled it out. Sue wandered over and rapped on it with her fist as well, then knocked on her own head. 

“Both of them, nice and hollow,” she quipped. She grabbed a pinch of shredded cheddar and mimed taking a sip of the lager, and Harry mock-smacked it out of her hands.

“No drinking on the job, Perkins,” he said, and grinned at her. She gave him a quick wink and nicked a bit more cheese as she headed off. 

Harry was in the groove. His pastry was light and flaky, the filling was rich and savoury, and Mary’s bright blue eyes sparkled when she bit into it. Paul sawed off part of the bread and — praise Merlin — shook Harry’s hand afterward, and Harry earned his first star baker of the competition.


	5. Chapter 5

Petunia has to hire a boy from the store to install her new, much larger telly. It’s the first time she’s done anything like this, the first time she’s spent money on something so expensive and unnecessary since Vernon’s death, and she's strangely thrilled. She even pays the boy to show her how to start and stop live programs — something she didn’t even know was possible. He attaches tiny stickers to her remote to show her which buttons to push.

During the next episode, she pauses the telly on Harry’s face. No one would call the boy handsome, certainly. He’s still rather short and his hair is still a sight, but he’s filled out quite a bit and he has a wide, easy smile that Petunia doesn’t remember ever seeing before. Something else about him is different too, she realises: his scar, the one that had been so ominous and raw-looking when he was a baby, has completely disappeared. It had lasted for ages, a constant and oddly stubborn reminder of… well, of things Petunia would rather not remember. 

Still squinting at Harry’s face, Petunia registers the posh-seeming black glasses frames and suddenly recalls his primary school ringing them up to say he needed specs. One rainy afternoon, Vernon had dropped Harry and Petunia off at the optician’s in town, but he and Dudley hadn’t wanted to wait around for them to fit the lenses to the round metal frames. Petunia had chosen them because they were the cheapest ones in the shop. 

When they finally finished, Petunia and Harry had gone to a chip shop before they'd returned home alone on the bus. Just outside the door, Harry had stopped to stare into a puddle, saying he’d never been able to see water like that before. He was charming, actually. It hadn’t been all bad, had it?

(It had. Petunia is conveniently forgetting that Vernon had been furious at the unnecessary expense. And she’d not gotten any chips for Dudley — even though they’d have been soggy by the time they’d made it home! — and he’d thrown a wild strop when he found out they’d been out to eat without him. Petunia never took Harry on that kind of outing, or had his eyes checked, ever again.)

Petunia watches Harry bake, and watches Paul shake his hand. When the episode ends, she finds herself picking up the telephone beside her chair and dialing Beulah. 

“Hullo?” Beulah picks up, sounding tetchy, and Petunia can’t bring herself to speak. She hates asking for favours, hates _owing_ anyone anything, hates helping or being helped — so it costs her something to ask for this. She makes small talk for just long enough, she thinks, and then she broaches the real reason she'd called.

“Beulah, do you know the new contestant on Bake-Off? Har— er, Barry?”

“Barry… is he the schoolteacher? Made that monstrosity that looked like a shoe last time?”

“No, not that one— Barry. The bloke with the specs, the big black ones. He was star baker last week,” Petunia says, and can’t keep the tiniest hint of pride out of her voice.

“Oh, yes, the one with the specs and the messy hair! I’m sure he uses product. Ernie is always telling me about product,” Beulah says knowingly. She never misses a chance to brag about her grandson, Petunia thinks, although heaven knows he’s not so much to speak of. An insurance salesman up in Glasgow. Doesn’t even own a home the way Dudley does.

“Is Colin still working security for the show, then?” Petunia asks, already knowing the answer full well. Beulah’s husband is a retired police officer who picks up extra work in private security now. Beulah never misses the chance to brag about his work for the BBC, which occasionally puts him in contact with semi-famous people who do or do not fail to say hello to him. 

“Oh yes,” Beulah says self-importantly. “He’s been stationed at the tent this season! He—”

Petunia interrupts her. “Do you think he might be able to get Barry’s address for me, then? He’s an… an old relation,” she says, mentally kicking herself for telling the truth. 

“Oh,” Beulah repeats, slightly taken aback. “Well, I’m not sure—”

“You’re right, I’m sorry to ask,” Petunia says. “I’m sure Colin doesn’t have that kind of access, that’s probably reserved only for the upper echelons of the security force.”

“But he is! In the upper echelon, I mean,” Beulah says. 

“So it shouldn’t be a problem, then? To get the address? Wonderful!” Petunia says. “I’ll be over on Tuesday night as usual for bridge. Thank you, dear.” She hangs up the phone before Beulah can say another word. On Tuesday, that twit Colin hands her a piece of paper with a London address on it and makes her swear she’ll never tell a soul where she got it. 

***

Draco gets a scare in the next episode, when Harry’s signature bake is a carrot cake that turns a violently hideous shade of brown. It's so heavy that the crew won’t eat it. Mel and Sue pretend to use it as a hat and then collapse under its weight. 

Harry does badly in the technical, too, coming in next to last on an obscure Greek almond pastry that Paul barely explained. Draco watches nearly the entire episode peeking through his hands over his eyes, sitting literally on the edge of the couch. 

Harry tries to pull Draco back into a hug. “It turns out all right — you already know I made the finals!” 

“I know, I know, but I didn’t realise it was this _close_ , Potter! And what were you thinking adding more water when the instructions _explicitly_ said only 20 millilitres!”

Harry just laughs while Draco mutters “can’t follow the fucking directions if it kills you,” and curses Gryffindors, half the professors at Hogwarts, and all their years of substandard education. But Harry pulls it out in the showstopper, of course, a working replica of the London Eye with tiny carriages made of macarons and liquorice, and he lives to see another round. Draco can hardly believe it. 

***

A few days later, Draco’s come home for lunch: a bowl of Harry’s trifle with bittersweet chocolate cake, whipped cream, and brandied cherries. 

There’s a light knock at the door, and he reluctantly abandons his food to open it. A thin woman with washed-out gray hair pulled back into a tight bun is standing on the step. She’s wearing drab raincoat, even though it’s perfectly sunny outside. She’d be completely unremarkable except for her long ropey neck and her pinched face, which is almost dessicated-looking, terribly prim and humourless. Draco has never seen her before.

“May I help you?” he asks. Perhaps she’s selling something, he thinks. If so, she’s already doing a terrible job of it.

“Well, yes. I was, er, looking for Harry. Harry Potter. I believe he lives here.” She juts her chin forward, challenging. 

“And you are?” Draco asks formally. Her expression pinches even further, somehow, and she’s looking over his shoulder — at Harry, who’s just appeared behind him in the doorway, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Hullo, Aunt Petunia,” Harry says. His voice is wary, but not shocked. 

_Aunt Petunia._ Draco registers the name and takes it all in again. The hair, the neck, the expression. This is the woman who shut Harry in a cupboard. Draco feels his first flush of anger and wants to slam the door in her face, but another look at Harry calms him. If Harry can be calm and civil, so can Draco. He'll follow Harry's cue. But, he thinks, if she puts a foot wrong, he can’t wait to hex her into oblivion.

“Hello, Harry.” The two of them stare at each other and Draco can’t read the look on Harry’s face. It’s a look he’s never seen before, and in four years of marriage and a long history before that, Draco thought he’d become an expert on every face Harry has to offer. 

“I’m Draco Malfoy,” he says. Manners compel him to offer his hand to her and she takes it, limp as a wet noodle. He drops it as quickly as he can. 

“Petunia Dursley,” she says. At least she has the courtesy to sound a bit shaky.

“Are you and Vernon still living on Privet Drive, then?” Harry asks her, when the silence becomes too much to bear.

“Yes. Well, I am,” she says. “Vernon passed several years ago. Heart attack in his sleep. Very sudden. No pain. May he rest in peace.” It sounds like words she’s said often, without inflection of any kind. She doesn’t seem sad in the slightest. 

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Harry’s voice doesn’t betray a trace of sadness either. “How's Dudley?”

“He’s well. Two children and a wife. He lives in Surrey, in a very nice flat. He’s in sales—”

“Get out of here,” Draco says suddenly, loudly, surprising even himself. Fuck, he thinks, so much for following Harry’s lead.

“Excuse me?” Petunia takes a step back, looking affronted.

“You heard me. Leave. Get out of my house. _Our_ house.”

Once provoked, Petunia seems to come to life. “I’m not even _in_ your house! You haven’t properly asked me in!”

“And I don’t intend to. How dare you show up here? You’re an abusive, vile old hag, and I won’t have you anywhere near—”

“Abusive?!” she cries, her voice becoming more shrill by the moment. “He wasn’t abused. We never _hit_ him.”

Draco has never loathed someone so quickly and completely in his entire life. 

“You _tried_. You tried to hit him. Many times, you and your vile husband.”

Petunia looks horrified. “Not seriously! We never— we didn’t honestly—“

“Oh, really, just some light _not-serious_ hitting, then? You _not-seriously_ tried to assault him with a frying pan. Brilliant. Great child-rearing techniques you’ve developed, I’m sure Dr Spock will be calling any moment.”

“Wh- what?” Petunia is speechless now, and she looks like a drawstring bag someone’s pulled impossibly taut. Draco finds himself enjoying this, his old penchant for anger and pettiness flaring down low in his belly. It’s a bit delightful, really, to let go and get sharp and angry, just the way he used to. 

“Yes, yes, congratulations are really in order. But in case no one’s informed you, there are other kinds of abuse. _Many_ other kinds,” he says darkly. 

“Oh, nonsense. Come, now, Harry!” She appeals to him, looking past Draco. Her voice has grown even louder, and Draco winces. “We put a roof over your head! You had a place to sleep!” 

Harry has gone very still, the way he always does during serious confrontation. He’s wound tight and completely silent — which, Draco realises, is at least partially the fault of the woman in front of him. He digs in further, distantly hears his own voice becoming even colder. 

“I believe you forced him to sleep in some sort of cupboard?” Draco says. Sarcasm drips from every word. “Funny, that doesn’t sound like much of a bedroom to me. You must have very innovative architecture on Privet Drive, then?”

“Well, no,” Petunia says, but she’s deflated a bit. Draco notes distantly that she does at least have the decency to look ashamed. But she rallies, tries again: “Harry, tell him. You always had clothes, and enough food to eat.”

Draco turns to look at Harry, who’s still stone-faced and silent. With a pang, Draco remembers how painfully thin Harry’d been during first year, how his bony elbows and knees had jutted out from his ill-fitting clothes. Draco’s hand aches for his wand; he wants to hex this woman halfway to Cornwall. 

“You— you weren’t starving!” Petunia is, somehow, still talking. “I taught you to cook! Look at your baking now!”

“You didn’t allow me to eat most of it, Petunia,” Harry says coolly. Draco notices that he’s left off the “Aunt.” “I had Dudley’s leftovers, sometimes. I snuck food in the middle of the night.”

Harry’s calm makes Draco even more furious. He hears the blood thrumming in his ears and takes a step forward. “As I said, it’s time you leave.”

Eyes bulging, looking increasingly unhinged, Petunia ignores Draco and plows on. “You had a roof over your head! I fulfilled my commitment to Li… to your mother!”

Harry’s gone pale, his lips pressed into a thin line. “In letter, maybe. Not in spirit.”

Petunia stops short, because — Draco assumes — she knows this is true. Presumably, Lily had wanted someone who would love Harry, and no protestations of Petunia’s could possibly extend to that. She had not loved him, not even when he was a tiny orphaned baby, not when he was a chubby sweet toddler, not when he was a curious preschooler, not when he was a wide-eyed 7-year-old or a gangly 10-year-old. She simply had not loved him, ever. 

Draco wants to tear this woman limb from limb. 

Harry glances over at him. “Draco, maybe you should go inside—”

“Don’t ‘Draco’ me,” he says nonsensically. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, er, perhaps we could stop standing in the doorway, then?” Harry motions inside, and Draco gapes at him. Did he seriously just invite this woman into their home? 

That — astonishingly — seems to be what finally gives Petunia the impetus to leave.

“I really must be going,” she says. Draco is sure that’s a lie, but he’s not going to call her on it; he just wants her gone. She tightens the belt on her raincoat. It’s already cinched so tight that her circulation must be compromised, Draco thinks, I hope it chokes her.

“But Harry,” she says, and something inside Draco snaps.

“Get his name out of your mouth,” Draco says, taking a step toward her. He feels Harry grab his arm but he wrenches free. “Get off of our doorstep, get away from our house, and most importantly, get away from _him_. You don’t get to talk to him. You don’t get a piece of him, just because now he’s on your telly.”

“Draco, love, come on—” Harry tries to interrupt.

“Oh, no, if she’s going to stay on our stairs, then I’m just getting started.” Petunia takes a step backward, still tugging on the belt of her raincoat. Draco wants to strangle her with it, and then she somehow proceeds to make him even more angry.

“I could report you, you know!” Somehow, her voice grows even more shrill. “You’re lying to the judges about your name and about your— about who you are! Are you using… you know… to improve your bakes?”

“You can’t even say the word ‘magic’?” Draco asks incredulously. Beside him, Harry’s gone ominously silent again. They all stare at each other for a beat.

“Don’t you dare—” Draco begins, but Harry cuts him off. 

“If you’d like to turn me in, Petunia, go ahead. You always did fear breaking the rules so much.”

She takes another step back. “Don’t tell me about fear, Harry. I _know_ about fear. It drives people mad. You’ll understand when you have a child. There is nothing more terrifying and you are at the mercy of that fear, every moment of every day. I was so scared...” she trails off.

Petunia’s casual assumption that all people want children strikes Draco as utterly bizarre, but he’s surprised to find himself softening, just a bit.

“You’re talking about Dudley, though,” Harry says quietly. “Not me.”

“No,” Petunia says. Her voice has quieted and there’s an honesty to her now that Draco recognises, grudgingly. “I’m talking about—” she pauses as though it pains her to say the name — “I’m talking about Lily. She was so scared, the last time I spoke to her. I didn’t know of what, exactly, she didn’t tell me, she never told me a single thing about her life or about your lot. I didn’t know about any of those problems in your world. I didn’t know anything!”

And even Draco, then, can see the decades of hurt beneath her fear. Despite himself, he softens just as she says again, almost in a whisper, “I really must be going.”

“Wait,” Harry says, but she mutters, “no, no, this was a terrible mistake,” and hurries down the stairs and back into the street, disappearing before Draco can think what to do.

Harry shuts the door and pauses for a moment with his hand still on it. He puffs out his cheeks, blows air out of his mouth, and waves off Draco’s attempts to talk about what just happened. 

He’s too quiet for days. Draco tries being gentle and then tries prodding him, but he can’t even get Harry to have a proper row about it. All he’ll say is that he doesn’t want more ugliness, and that he’d like to see Petunia again. 

“Staying angry at someone is like you drinking poison and expecting them to die,” Harry says one evening, out of the blue.

“What?” Draco’s caught off-guard.

“Just something my Mind Healer said once,” Harry says distractedly, turning to fiddle with the oven.


	6. Harry

Two days before the next show, Harry candied three dozen violets himself. He picked each bloom off a large bouquet Draco had found at a Muggle florist. He washed each one, then painstakingly painted them with simple syrup on a tiny brush, dusted them with icing sugar, snipped the stems, and put them in a special container to dry. It took him hours. 

Harry carefully carried the violets on the train, then on the bus, and then into the tent — so gingerly, as if the container itself could break in two. 

He constructed a huge trifle: Victoria sponge soaked in a rum and lemon sugar syrup, layered with mascarpone and a creamy citrus curd with an acid bite, not too sweet. With long tweezers, he placed the violets in a perfect circle on top, each one nestled in mounds of whipped cream. 

Harry placed the trifle on the end of his workstation and stepped back. While he sat and waited to bring it to the judges, the other bakers chatting nervously or fretting in silence as the crew set up their shots, Harry envisioned Petunia watching this scene. 

He couldn’t remember the names of those people the Dursleys had been trying to impress the night Dobby smashed that trifle on the floor, just before second year. But Harry remembered their faces perfectly, remembered Petunia’s, too, the look of horror and rage and fear when the trifle was ruined. She’d been afraid. So had he. 

Although Harry felt numb the whole way through the judging, his smile false and too slow, he made the semi-finals anyway. Had Petunia candied her violets herself? Harry would never know.


	7. Chapter 7

Draco shows up on Petunia’s doorstep exactly a week after she’d appeared on his. He’s shocked she opens the door, actually, but he wastes no time. 

“Let me in,” he says, not giving her a choice. She pokes her head out the door and looks anxiously from side to side. “Or I’ll pull out my wand and blast the door open, and I'll shout to all your neighbours while I’m doing it.”

She gasps and pulls him inside quickly, tugging hard on the sleeve of his coat. He yanks it back once they’re through the doorway. Inside, the front hall looks neat but worn, and the air is stale. Draco can barely imagine Harry here. 

“Can I help you?” she asks, looking even more pinched and fearful than she had the other day. 

“I’ve come to ask you something,” Draco says, less heatedly. “But first, I need to take a look around.”

“What? Where? I didn’t—“

“I want to see where Harry grew up.” Draco hadn’t intended to say that, but once the words slip out, he realises he means them.

“Absolutely not, I didn’t—“

Draco pulls his wand from his pocket and just holds it loosely at his side. Petunia freezes, her eyes fixed on it. 

“ _Now_ , may I go upstairs?” Draco asks. Wordlessly, she steps aside and Draco heads up the carpeted stairs. She doesn’t follow him, and he takes a cursory look around. Three bedrooms, a loo with faded curtains patterned with roses. It’s utterly ordinary, a bit rundown and sad. Draco isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he doesn’t find it upstairs. 

He walks back down and Petunia is standing stock still at the bottom of the stairs, her body angled oddly, and that’s when Draco sees she’s blocking the cupboard. 

“Pardon me,” he says, almost politely, and she moves aside right away, still eyeing the wand in his hand. No resistance. Draco is almost angry with himself for feeling sorry for this woman. 

The door to the cupboard under the stairs is small, slanted at the top. It opens with a little shove. Draco has to duck and nearly fold himself in half, to step through it. 

Tears prick at his eyes almost immediately. It’s dusty and close, airless, hot, and so impossibly small. To think Harry had described this as sort of cosy. To think this had been a place he’d felt safe, or at least safer, than in the rest of this house. 

There’s no bed anymore, no sign anyone had lived in this space, which is patently not a bedroom. Just a few empty, crooked shelves built in under the slope of the stairs. 

Draco’s throat is tight. There’s a flashlight laying on the end of one shelf, and Draco remembers Harry telling him that batteries for a flashlight were the only thing he'd ever stolen. At the time, Draco hadn’t thought much about it. He’d been surprised Harry had never nicked anything else from a store; Merlin knew Draco’s own shoplifting phase had lasted for years. He’d taken things whenever he could, for no reason except the illicit thrill it always gave him. He’d figured that a kid as deprived as Harry would have nicked loads of things.

He looks around more, studying the cupboard, searching for the connection he knows must exist between his Harry and the little boy who was forced to live here. 

Then he finds it. 

Just as he puts his hand on the doorknob to leave, Draco feels a strange notch just beneath the handle, and a sweeper handle lying near it. It’s the only thing on the floor. Draco picks it up and realises the end of the handle fits perfectly into the groove, which looks like two had been smoothed and worn away over time. Draco slides the handle into place and it fits perfectly. Harry had used this to hold the door shut. So they couldn’t come in. 

Draco presses his knuckle and then his whole hand to his mouth. Quick fury burns insides of him, and he slams out of the cupboard and flies at Petunia. She’s standing just outside the door and she falls back, body pressing into the wall opposite. Draco stops just inches from her face.

“This — _this_ — was his _bedroom_? This is not a place for a person to sleep, it’s a _closet_. Made for leftover junk, and things you don’t want. _Fuck_.”

Petunia flinches at the words, and that just ramps Draco up further. 

“Oh, does my language offend you? I’m so sorry.” His voice drips sarcasm. “How can you have the nerve to balk at that when you did _this_?” He motions to the cupboard. 

Draco pulls out his wand again. He can’t help it, it’s positively thrumming, responding to the intensity of his anger, and he needs it in his hand. He leaves it down by his side but Petunia responds with a terrified little squeak anyway, and Draco knows he’s scaring her and Harry wouldn’t want him to do this, but he cannot stop now. 

“Let me make myself clear: I loathe you. You cannot imagine how much I hate you for what you’ve done, for ruining his childhood. If it were up to me alone, you’d be locked up in Azkaban — that’s a horrible prison, by the way, and trust me on that because I’ve lived there.“ Petunia shrinks farther away, like Draco’s criminal past makes him even more frightening to her. She has no idea, and that makes him even angrier. He sneers just to see her flinch. 

“But Harry,” he says, and Draco’s voice gentles when he says his name, he can’t help it. He clears his throat and begins again. “Harry doesn’t want more ‘ugliness.’ He says he’d like to see you again, for some reason that entirely escapes my understanding.”

Petunia’s eyes widen, in disbelief or more fear, he’s not sure. 

“So I’m inviting you to our house, for a viewing party of the finale. It’s a crying shame that I have to do this, but Harry said he’d like you there. I volunteered to ask you, because I didn’t want him to have to set foot in this house again.”

“He—? she squeaks, then tries again, her eyes still fixed on Draco’s wand. “He wants me there?”

“Yes. Though I can’t fathom why.”

“That’s wonderful,” she says. “Th- thank you. I would love to come.”

Draco shakes his head, and suddenly he can’t wait to leave. He turns without another word and then stops suddenly. 

“Petunia,” he calls from the doorway. “Harry lost the competition. His showstopper collapsed. The solicitor from Brighton wins.”

Her face falls, just a fraction, and Draco takes one last bit of final pleasure in spoiling the season for her as he walks out the door and down the garden path. 

***

After Draco leaves, Petunia avoids the cupboard under the stairs for days. She never goes inside anyway, but now she won’t even walk past it unless she absolutely must. 

Until, one night, as she’s on her way to climbing the same stairs she’s climbed every night for 40 years, she finds she can’t continue. She stands, facing the door, and battles herself in a way she rarely allows.

Inside, the air is too close. Dust is everywhere, disturbed after years of being ignored, and Petunia can barely breathe. All she can think of is Lily and how many times she lost her. First to magic, when Petunia had been abandoned, when all her worst fears about being ordinary and plain were realised. Then, after a few years, Lily was lost to that wizard school even during holidays. When things were bad and their parents were confused and unhappy, Lily chose not to come home and to leave Petunia there alone with them. 

And then, worst of all, Petunia lost Lily to James. He’d tried to be charming when they’d first met, but Petunia was far too clever for that. He was the sort of man, dashing and unruly and full of personality, that Petunia herself could never have — would never _want_ to have, she corrected herself. 

It was James who truly stole Lily from her, Petunia thought. Magic had begun it, but James finished the job. As adults — barely — Lily and Petunia hardly ever spoke, although both of them had tried in their own ways on occasion. But the day Harry arrived on Privet Drive marked the end, even of that, forever. I _did_ try, she insists to herself, staring into the murky brown darkness of the cupboard. Even as a small voice in her head insists, _not hard enough_. 

Petunia steadies herself with one hand against a shelf. Back then, she could hardly look at Harry for everything he’d symbolised, for the loss of Lily, and for his awful father and the awful school and for _magic_ , which Petunia still could hardly bring herself to admit she’d ever wanted, even as a child. But now, in the cupboard, she couldn’t deny it to herself: she’d lost Lily to the very thing she’d wanted most desperately and could never have. She knew the word they called her — “Muggle.” She’d heard James say it once, an awful ugly word, and she’d heard Lily shush him. Its meaning must be as terrible as its sound.

So Petunia hardened her heart to Harry. Every scrap of kindness inside her turned only toward Dudley, with nothing left over. Raising two young boys, one of whom reminded her of the greatest pain of her life, had nearly broken her — but it had been shameful nonetheless, and Petunia could not lie to herself any longer. She’d known it at the time and she knew it now, standing in this dusty cupboard. Sick shame, guilt and regret, clog her throat. She stands there for a long time, forces herself to stay, far past when she wants to turn and leave.


	8. Harry

For Harry’s final showstopper, he allowed himself to bring a tiny part of his real, magical self into the tent for the first time: a fall spice cake in the shape of an old-fashioned steam engine. 

“It makes me think of going back to school,” he told the camera, as he knelt on the floor in front of an oven. “All the warm fall flavours, you know — cinnamon, brown butter, clove, all that.” Just in the nick of time, he stops himself from adding "butterbeer."

Mary clapped her hands together. “That’s just cracking! Those are some of my absolute favourite flavours.” 

She looked down at him, eyes shining. “Did you enjoy school, then, Barry?”

For one moment, just one controlled little slip, he allowed himself to tell the full truth. “Yeah, I loved going back to school. I went to a boarding school, quite far from where I grew up, and the moment I first spotted the train pulling into the station to take me back there… it was the best moment of my whole year, every year. I _lived_ for it. These flavours bring a bit of it back to me.”

Here’s the part that Harry didn’t say: Hogwarts was lost to him after the war. He’d only been back twice, both times a disaster that ended with him forcing down panic, unable to stop seeing the images of curselight and crumbling bricks and bodies crumpled in the corridors. Both times, he’d Flooed home from McGonagall’s office and dropped to his hands and knees in the safety of their living room, shaking, trying and failing to hold back the sobs. 

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Mary said, snapping Harry back to reality. “I enjoyed returning to school in the fall myself.”

“Nerds,” Sue called from the sidelines, and Harry — Barry — got to work again. 

He decorated the train with candy Draco had made just for him: liquorice rails and miniature black gumdrops, plus a big cloud of spun sugar for the steam. It was unmistakably the Hogwarts Express. 

And after the judging, when everything was over except announcing winner, Harry hugged the other two bakers and walked out to the lush, green lawn for the family party. Draco and Hermione and a crowd of happy Weasleys had all been waiting for him, while trying very hard to act like Muggles. Hermione gave him a hug and pulled back to scrutinise his face immediately. 

“I knew it,” she said, whispering so that the cameras couldn’t pick up their conversation. “I _knew_ it!”

“What? You don’t even know the results yet.” Harry tried on his most innocent voice. “Hey, have you—“

“I can tell by your face. You lost, and it was on purpose. You threw the competition,” she murmured, barely audible over the rest of the happy crowd. “This is brilliant. Ron owes me money.”

Harry gave her a sheepish smile. “I like the other bakers.”

“He owes me _so_ much money,” she continued, not acknowledging Harry's words at all. “And the dishes and all the stupid housework spells every night for a month. He said your inner competitive spark would shine through, but I knew better.”

“I just don’t mind losing.” He frowned at that. “At some things,” he amended. Ron wandered over with a camera and a microphone in tow, mercifully saving him from the rest of the conversation. 

“Cheers, _Barry_! Well done! ’Mione, you should tuck in, this engine is bloody delicious...” and together, they walked toward the sweets table. They only needed one Obliviate for the whole afternoon, after Ginny wondered aloud how to decorate a Christmas tree if you couldn’t enlist fairies to help.


	9. Chapter 9

Draco’s been dreading the finale party, despite the fact that he’d been the one to insist they hold a party in the first place. He hadn’t counted on Harry wanting to invite Petunia, and they haven’t heard from her since Draco visited Privet Drive. 

To match Draco’s mood, it’s raining, a true summer downpour in contrast to the sunny spring day when the bakers’ families had gathered at the tent. Everyone will cram into Harry and Draco’s flat; Harry’s recreated some of his bakes from the show, and people are expected to arrive in time to watch the finale together. Draco wants to go back to bed and take Harry with him, pull him under the covers and snog him senseless and never think about Petunia Dursley or the rest of the world ever again. 

She’s the first to arrive — of course, Draco thinks darkly. When he opens the door, this time, he motions her inside reluctantly. He looks her up and down; she’s dressed fussily, in a flowered dress that looks to be 20 years old, and Draco has competing urges to take her shopping and make her less bloody depressing, and also to throw her back out on her arse. He can’t get the cupboard out of his mind. He doesn’t realise he’s just standing there, staring her down, until Harry comes up beside him. 

“Hello,” she says tentatively. 

“Hullo.” Harry’s equally guarded, and Draco can’t bring himself to greet her at all. There’s a stilted silence. 

“Draco, would you— could you give us a moment, please? I believe there’s something in the oven that needs attending to,” Harry says.


	10. Harry

The moment Draco squeezes his arm and heads into the kitchen, Harry immediately regrets sending him away. 

Petunia looks up at him — she’s so short, Harry never realised — and clears her throat. She says, “could I just…” and Harry’s not sure what she means until she reaches up a hand toward his head. Even now, he flinches hard, instinctively, and she pulls back. 

“I just wanted— your fringe.” She motions with her hand and Harry pushes back his hair. He assumes it’s so she can see his scar, which he hasn’t charmed for the party, but she looks carefully into his eyes instead. 

“You do look like her, Harry,” Petunia says. She looks away, as though seeing him hurts her. “Your father too, of course, but there’s something else.” 

She’s speaking in a halting, uncertain voice that Harry can’t remember ever hearing before. “Your eyes, I suppose, but not only that. Perhaps… perhaps it’s your kindness. Or your ability to forgive—“

Her voice gives out and there’s another awkward silence, far worse than the first. 

“That’s not really… ah...” Harry ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck. He looks around reflexively for Draco. He’s surprised to find panic fluttering in his throat, a trace of old resentment and fear rising inside him, unwanted and unwelcome. 

But Petunia isn’t finished. She’s still trying to say something, squeezing a napkin painfully in her hands and Harry feels sorry for it, for a moment. He feels sorry for _her_. 

“I’ve thought about what he said the other day, about how we put you in the cupboard under the stairs, and locked you in the guest bedroom upstairs… maybe he’s right, and it was… what he said…”

Draco had gone to Privet Drive? Harry’d thought he’d just called Petunia on a mobile or something to invite her, and fuck, why hasn’t Draco come back yet? 

“All right, then,” Harry offers lamely.

“It’s not, it’s _not_ all right,” Petunia says, and the poor napkin is positively shredded in her hands. They both start to talk at the same time.

“Honestly, it’s—“

“I’m sorry!” she blurts, rather loudly and pathetically, her control slipping further. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, in a whisper this time. 

Harry feels like he’s been Stunned. Inside, some small strange part of him is making it hard to draw a breath. 

“I’m sorry about all of it,” she continues, fretful, lips pressed together. “About the way… the way things were in our house, about the way I was. And I’m sorry I lied to you about your mum, Harry, she loved you, so dearly, and your father did, too, from the little I saw, anyway. I only saw Lily once or twice after James took her away and I missed her so much, Harry, I still do, no one understands, Vernon wouldn’t hear of her, he wouldn’t even allow me to say her name in our home. I missed her even when she was still alive, because she was gone to me then too. I think about her every day, and lying about her to you was unforgivable and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She finally runs out of words and take a big, shaky breath. Harry can see the tears in her eyes. 

“Thank you,” Harry says quietly, and at last, Draco’s back at his side. Harry’s not sure how long he’s been there, but it’s long enough for him to have heard most of her final speech. 

“That’s not enough, you know,” Draco tells Petunia, but Harry can tell he’s been mollified. “But I suppose it’ll do for now.”

“Okay.” She pulls a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs at her eyes. Harry gives her a little nod, and then, thank Merlin, this is over. He practically runs toward the safe haven of the kitchen.


	11. Chapter 11

After everyone arrives, they crowd around the telly to watch Harry lose. They’d known already, of course, but Draco feels the tiniest bit disappointed anyway. Next to Draco, Ron’s proudly holding his and Hermione’s new baby, Rose, a tiny thing with downy red hair that keeps getting crumbs in it.

“One sticking charm,” Ron laments. “Just one little sticking charm, and it would have been yours.”

“What kind of Gryffindor are you?” Draco asks. “That would have been cheating. I’d thought you’d all be far too honourable for that.”

“Harry,” Hermione says, looking across the room at Petunia, who’s studying the moving photos on the mantel with a worried expression. “Is that…” Hermione trails off, realising, and Ron puts a preemptive hand on her arm, seeing what’s about to happen. 

“ _Yes_ , it _is_. Can you believe it?” Draco says forcefully, at the same time as Ron warns, “Hermione…”

“I absolutely can _not_ believe it. Wow. _Wow_. I have some things I’d like to _discuss_ with that _horrid_ woman—” Hermione takes the sleeping baby from Ron and starts bouncing her rather forcefully up and down in her arms. 

“Yes, _exactly_ ,” Draco continues. “I’d like to discuss _responsibility_ and _parenthood_ and _locking children in rooms with bars on the windows, do you remember—_ ”

Ron tries to shush them. “Of course, we all remember, but I don’t think Harry wants us to make a scene—“

“—and that cupboard, Ronald, have you forgotten about the _cupboard_?!”

Ron tries to take the baby back, but Hermione holds on more tightly. “Can you imagine? That’s not how you treat _a child_. He was a _baby_!”

Draco is nodding so forcefully that his neck is beginning to ache. He has quite a lot more to say, but Harry interrupts to steer him off toward the kitchen, where Sue Perkins is standing at the kitchen table, surveying the bakes. 

Petunia follows right behind, looking out of place, likely chased out of the living room by the force of Hermione’s glare. Petunia stops short when she sees Sue, who gamely holds out a hand. 

“Hullo, I’m Sue Perkins. And you are?”

Petunia takes her hand but looks too starstruck to speak. 

“Distant relation,” Draco growls, half under his breath. 

“Not that distant,” Harry says mildly. “This is Petunia Dursley, my mum’s sister. My… aunt.” Draco doesn’t miss Harry’s tiny pause. There’s a lilt to his voice, like he’s tried on the name, but he isn’t sure if it fits. 

“Oh, I see,” Sue says. “Nice to meet you.” She assesses Petunia coolly and Draco wonders what she knows. No one truly understands how awful Harry’s time had been at the Dursleys, but it’s common knowledge that Harry’s life with the Muggles, pre-Hogwarts, wasn’t sunshine and roses. 

“I’m sorry I never got to meet Harry’s parents,” Sue adds, more serious than Draco’s ever seen her. “Your sister and brother-in-law were both quite wonderful, I hear.”

“Er, yes,” Petunia stumbles. “Thank you.”

There’s an awkward silence, and Draco steps in. “Harry began baking when he lived with Petunia,” he offers. “He basically served as their cook. Unpaid.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Petunia says, “it wasn’t like that exactly—“ and then she’s off to the races, babbling to Sue with an affected fondness that turns Draco’s stomach. “I taught him everything I knew! Why, once…”

Draco snorts loudly and tries to cover it up with a cough. 

“Oh, that’s fucking rich,” Draco hisses under his breath, moving to leave.

Harry squeezes his arm and pulls him closer. He whispers, “Don’t you dare leave me with her again. I’ll make it worth your while later if you stay.”

“Worth my while?” Draco raises an eyebrow as Petunia asks Sue why she doesn’t find some nice bloke and settle down. For fuck’s sake.

“You know how I mean,” Harry says. He waves a subtle hand to cast a tingly warming charm somewhere in the direction of Draco’s trousers, and Draco has to burst out coughing again. 

“Are you all right, Draco?” Petunia asks as he sputters, and Draco can only nod. “You do have a flare for the dramatic, dear.” 

Her expression becomes almost admiring, and something in Draco cracks. He begins to laugh uncontrollably at this utterly ridiculous situation. This is where his life has ended up: a party with his husband, Harry Potter, plus Harry’s wretched aunt and — of all the witches in the world — Sue Perkins. 

In a moment, Draco is laughing so hard and so helplessly that he has to clutch the back of a chair for support. Sue and Petunia look baffled and move off down the table, and Hermione appears next to him. 

“Are you okay?” She plucks a miniature tart from the table and sticks the whole thing in her mouth, not taking her eyes off of Petunia. “I still cannot believe she’s here.”

“Me neither,” Draco says, wiping his eyes and taking a deep breath. He eats a tart, too — sour rhubarb and vanilla custard and thick strawberry jam. Perfect. 

Hermione reaches for an espresso brownie swirled with caramel. “Fear does different things to everyone, I suppose,” she says. “It makes some of us reckless and bold.”

“And some of us cowardly...” Draco says, swallowing with some difficulty. 

“And some of us weak,” Hermione finishes, looking at Petunia. 

Draco licks his fingers clean. “We won’t be having her ’round for Sunday dinner any time soon.”

“Good.” Hermione is surveying the table again, deciding what to eat next. Draco looks over at Harry, balanced between so many incongruous worlds all at once, and goes to join him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! All comments are extremely welcome either here or on [Livejournal](https://hd-fan-fair.livejournal.com/149216.html).


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